FAQs

Steven Bankler welcomes all inquiries concerning his niche areas of accounting services. If his answers to the following questions do not address your particular concern, or you want to learn more or schedule an appointment, please Contact Us.

No. Our firm serves a particular market. Most of our services are geared toward closely held and/or family-owned businesses. We provide these clients with planning and compliance services. We do offer some limited financial statement services restricted to review and compilation statements. We also provide consultation services including litigation support to large, including publicly held, corporations and other entities such as government, nonprofits, and others.

My job is to minimize the tax effects of a transaction you’re considering. For example, if you want to go from Point A to Point B, and other tax advisors tell you either the tax will be an unsatisfactory amount or that you cannot get from Point A to Point B, I am more likely to find a way when others cannot. I analyze the transaction to see if there is another approach. Using what other clients are calling “out-of-the-box” creative skills and way of thinking, I may discover we can go from Point A to Point B by going through Point C, while maximizing your savings.

Another Profit Center® is Steven Bankler’s signature branch of accounting services. For clients whose businesses are profitable, it is our job to find tax and other cost savings that will pay for both annual accounting and tax fees and uncover leftover funds for the business owner. Compared to traditional CPA firms, we take the pure cost center (of outside accountants) and try to make it a profit center for our clients.

Asset protection is a process by which a business tries to isolate assets from the potential claims of creditors. Over the years, our society has evolved from a caveat emptor (buyer beware) model to a fiduciary (“it’s not my fault”) model. We have become very litigious, which leaves many businesses vulnerable. For example, a few years ago, a fast-food customer ordered coffee at a drive-through window and then spilled coffee on herself and was burned. She sued and was awarded approximately $2 million in damages. McDonald’s could afford the damages, but if something like this happened to your business, would you be able to survive? In short, we try to protect business assets from creditor claims.

We first analyze your existing business structure and then explain various exit-planning strategies available for your particular situation. Whether you plan to sell your business to an outsider, to employees or to your children and/or other relatives, the time to begin this crucial planning is many years before the sale takes place. The optimum—and easiest and least-expensive—time to plan is while still in the earliest stages of formation.

Suppose a client wants to sell business real estate and replace it with business property. He or she already owns raw land on which he or she wants to construct the replacement property. IRS rules and regulations state that exchanging real estate for improvements does not qualify. However, using qualified intermediaries as well as sale and leaseback provisions, the client can transfer the raw land, have the improvements built, and then receive the completed project back in a like-kind exchange on the “sale” of the original business property.

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I believe only professionally educated and experienced accounting professionals should handle our clients’ transactions. We don’t use any paraprofessionals, bookkeepers or other staff when working on client’s books and records. The only nonprofessional staff we employ is an administrative assistant who answers the phone and refers callers to the appropriate CPA, maintains all our files, sets appointments, and generally does a phenomenal job of keeping our organization running smoothly administratively.

Yes. We currently have business clients in Arizona and New York. In addition, we have individual tax clients in Germany, Alaska, New York, California, Colorado and elsewhere. As a member of the International Association of Practicing Accountants (IAPA), we have access to accountants throughout the United States and in more than 45 countries worldwide. Recently, our firm assisted a prospective client who was moving from Japan back to the United States who required both a United States and Japanese tax return. With the help of our Japanese affiliate, we were able to offer a complete solution to this client.

There are several reasons. First, tax season is by nature a high-demand period. For that reason, we prepare business returns on a first-in basis. Excluding tax season, we are able to assist our clients expediently; but during tax season, all our clients need our services in a compressed time so we serve many at once. Second, we prepare related business returns including for the owners, related partners and others all at the same time. We do this to minimize cost to our clients. For example, one client, before coming to us, hired an accounting firm that did an excellent job of planning but failed to prepare all the related returns concurrently. As a result, $30,000 in expenses went unused, which increased the business’s taxes overall by approximately $10,000.

No. We are a niche firm dealing with closely held and/or family-owned businesses. Our goal with these businesses is to become “Another Profit Center” where the tax savings would not only pay for our services but also put additional funds into the client’s pockets.

It depends on many factors, including the size of a business, your industry, and the range and complexity of business issues you may encounter. Some of these matters include bonding, preparing financial statements, or complicated tax challenges related to construction, inventory or manufacturing.
We Solve Problems®

Expertise

When you hire Steven Bankler and his team of certified public accountants, you get seasoned, knowledgeable CPAs.

Rather than experienced bookkeepers, promising CPAs-in-training or studious interns in the process of completing their accounting degrees, you get professional CPAs. We Solve Problems. We provide creative solutions to our clients’ unique problems including tax and estate planning, forensic accounting, expert witness and litigation support.

Testimonials

For corporate professionals handling multi-million dollar budgets and VIP accounts, the day-to-day accounting can be daunting. “We sought out Steven because of his expertise with start-up capital issues. His team has propelled us forward... --Jason and Colleen Benavides, Bahama Buck's Leon Springs, Owners >>Read more

"The Bankler motto is true; we really have saved money. Steven helped us restructure and find smarter ways to do business. Other accountants will tell you, ‘I don’t see anything in the tax code that says we can do it.’ Steven will tell you, 'I don't see anything in the tax code that says we cannot do it... --John F Dini and Leila Dini, MPN, Inc., Owners >>Read more

Curriculum Vitae

Steven Bankler understands business. As a businessman who is also a CPA since 1977, his proven track record speaks for itself. View his detailed experience here:

Quoted Opinions

For over 30 years, daily newspapers, television networks and affiliates and prominent newstalk radio programs have published and broadcasted Steven Bankler’s insights on a wide range of forensic accounting and tax topics. His expert opinion is highly regarded in informing and educating the public, as well as judges, and juries on complex issues.